


places that you long for

by miabicicletta



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2014-06-05
Packaged: 2018-02-03 12:56:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1745417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miabicicletta/pseuds/miabicicletta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly Hooper has been waiting at Baker St. an hour when he arrives, bursting through the door in a rush of wool and rain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	places that you long for

Molly Hooper has been waiting at Baker St. an hour when he arrives, bursting through the door in a rush of wool and rain. From the far side of a week, he is paler than when she’d seen him last, fraught with tension, all pent-up energy and mental aggression waiting to spin itself out on the puzzle at hand. Now, there is none of that excitement, only a weary set to his brow, coupled by pronounced hollows under his eyes and sunken cheeks. And all of it screams _exhaustion_. 

But there is something else, too. An afflicted, feral quality to his features. Something that hangs in the set of his jaw, that shows in the flash of teeth; something manic and disquieted that has set him on edge. He bounds through the door, discards his coat on the sofa and comes to her with eyes bright and blazing, pulling her into his arms. For a long moment, he only holds her, running his hands the length of her back, cradling her to him, eyes wide, as if seeing her for the first time in years, not days.

John had warned her in advance to expect this, but apart from the brief text ( _Code Blue: drama queen_ ) she does not know the details of the case, only that they were demanding, harrowing, and something about it left Sherlock Holmes troubled. 

The distress is palpable, both in the urgent press of his body and the haunted look in his eyes. He rests his head against hers, murmurs something against her temple, into her hair. Words so soft that, for a moment, she doesn’t realize he’s saying her name. He walks them backwards, and Molly raises her hands to help as he strips them both down until they are skin against skin, bare to each other. There is a tactile, ravenous desperation in his fingers as he pulls her against him and takes her to bed with a stormy, starving need. 

After, he is unusually quiet. Molly cards her fingers through his hair while he paints her skin with hieroglyphs and wanders the halls of his mind. She knows him well enough by now to take it in stride, his casual disconnection, as it affords her the opportunity to study him for a change. She loves this man, but he so often takes up all the air in a room, at times it is all she can do to manage a breath. So she embraces these spare moments when she is left to her own quiet contemplation. They are moments she can take in and savor. She has not always had the chance to do so. 

Molly Hooper was twenty-nine the year she met Sherlock Holmes, a series of not-introductions and glimmers of interaction that could all have passed for a first encounter. He haunted the morgue, skulking about in hallways and vanishing through doors like a wraith and it was five months before he so much as addressed her by name. Her heart stopped a little when he said it. Her head had spun; her words had vanished. Five years on, and Molly's heart is still stuttering at the sight of him. Her head is still spinning, and sometimes she cannot speak but for altogether different reasons than before. He no longer intimidates, and she is as London to him now—without secrets. There are no spaces in her life he does not inhabit, no chambers he cannot breach. Her lab, her life, her bed. She had always offered them, only now he accepts. Now, miraculously, he wants. 

A line from some long-ago book floats back to her. Details she had forgotten—the name of the book and who it was written by. But the words themselves had seared inside her, somewhere deep-down, in a part of her that was soft and tender and easily cut into. 

_There are places that you long for that you might not ever see._

Sherlock Holmes had been that, once. He was Bali and Kilimanjaro, Patagonia and the moon. He was England’s World Cup victory, and the library of Alexandria. Pemberley and Casablanca, a seat beside the Homecoming King. He was Narnia and he was Neverland; he was Hogwarts School and Bedford Avenue. Zanzibar. Coruscant. Hokkaido. Mars. He was, she had grieved, an eternal Wonderland: inscrutable and mysterious, and utterly unattainable. He was Sherlock Holmes and it was impossible he would ever long for Molly Hooper the way she longed for him. He was so _much_. Larger than life, unreal. And always, it had seemed, so very far away. 

Molly lays curled into him, his head tucked beneath her chin. Sherlock counts the vertebrae of her lumbar curve, the pads of his fingers tapping lightly over each disc and process in time with her every inhale, exhale—a habit of his. She is flattered that his mental catalogue about her would include something so insignificant as the length of her spine, the measure of her breaths.

“She looked like you.” 

She feels him speak the words with the whole of her body, the sound rumbling down, traveling through her, echoing through bone and tissue and blood. She hears him with every part of her. “Your victim,” she says.

“Yes.” He draws his fingers down her arm, follows the path of the brachial artery. “For an instant I thought it– It was somehow–”

She threads her fingers through his hair. “It wasn’t.” Her mouth drags across the skin of his brow, peppering kisses at his hairline. “I’m here,” she whispers. Sherlock raises his head from her chest, looking down at her. Those oceanic, outer-space eyes, drinking her in. 

“Will it always feel like this?” he asks her, brushing her hair back from her face.

“Like what?”

“Will it always _ache_ when I think of you? When I am away from you?” 

She tips her chin up, her mouth curving at his uncommon show of sentiment. “Is it so wrong to hope so?” 

He smiles, kissing her deeply. 

The second time is slower, sweeter. 

“Oh,” she breathes. She slides her palm along his back; feels the flex and tense of the trapezius, teres major, latissimus dorsi. She sighs his name into his mouth, and it passes between them like the sharing of a secret. _I love you. You are loved_. His hands find hers. Their fingers twine together, pressed hard into the sheets above her head. Tangled. 

Later he slings her leg over his hip, pulling them both on their sides. “Stay,” he says. “I want you to stay.” 

The corner of her mouth twitches in insolence. “I wasn’t planning to leave.”

“I don’t mean just tonight, Molly.” 

“I know what you mean, Sherlock.” 

“You always know,” he says, nuzzling the hollow of her throat. “How is it you always know? Do you have my every mood committed to memory?”

“ _You_ commit the universe to memory, Sherlock.” She lifts a finger, traces the lean curve of his shoulder, slipping her arm around his and holding him close. “I only know by heart.” 

_There are places that you long for that you might not ever see_ , Molly thinks, and strokes his hair as he drifts into sleep.

_But there are also great, unexpected adventures._

**Author's Note:**

> The quoted line from which the title is derived belongs to Alice Munro, who is a far better writer than I am :)


End file.
